Pretty much everyone in the world knows what a horse fly is. We certainly have them here. Horse flies, deer flies, and yellow flies. They all look somewhat different, but they are all the same pest. They don’t sting like a yellow jacket, and they don’t insert a proboscis like a mosquito. They use their sharp cutting mouth parts to draw blood, and then lap it up.

So, for me, that means I will kill one any time I see it, if I possibly can. The dogs don’t care much for them either. Zoe seems particularly upset when they fly around. Sam not so much. Zoe twirls around, jumps up and snaps at them. I have seen a dog actually kill a horsefly that way, but so far Zoe has not had any luck.

I don’t snap at them, but I do try to smack them if they land on my bare skin. I have hit them a couple of times lately, but they are tough. I didn’t manage to kill them, or even stun them. I had hoped to do just that so Zoe could finish it off. I may have mentioned before when my old Doberman Bella heard one she ran as fast as she could for home. Once I hit a horsefly on her back and it fell to the pavement. She bit it with her front teeth. I wanted Zoe to have that chance.

They are more than just a pest. They can cause livestock to lose weight, and they can transmit diseases from one animal to another. One source said that in 1976 losses due to biting flies was estimated at $40 million.

That’s sufficient reason to want to control them, but there is apparently no good way to do that.

One suggestion was to wear a blue cylinder coated with sticky material on top of a cap. It attracts the flies and they stick to the trap. They say that can be effective at reducing populations in limited areas. I doubt that I’m going to do that.